Shadow Lines
Today I fiddled with this poem from the dreaded section five in Ghost Maps -- one of the weakest poems in the section, I've always thought. Here's the old version:
The Shadow Box
One year for Christmas
the girls give him
a memory box:
medals and pins arrayed
on a tray of velvet.
He corners it
with his hands,
feels the mitred edges bite
the roots of thumbs.
They have to show him: a frame
On the paneled wall
by the bronze shoes
a square of folded gleam
and shadow.
Mostly I changed the line length -- I think a longer line might help to address some of the melodrama that taints this poem: short lines can be heighten drama to both good and bad effect. This is the new version:
The Shadow Box
One year for Christmas, the girls give him
a memory box: medals and pins arrayed
on velvet. He corners it and feels the mitered edges
bite the roots of thumbs. They have to show him:
a frame. It hangs on the paneled wall
by the bronze shoes: a square
of folded gleam and shadow.
Hmmm....
Not a huge day's work, but I also saw a three-hour movie and had a dish of mangos with flaming tequila. Ymmmm. The family is here, so posting may be spotty.
3 Comments
erin, i say stay with the earlier long line version. if there’s melodrama, it’s not apparent. the long lines “get out of the way” of the poem. the short lines strain a bit. either way you’ve hit yet another home run.
What a fool. The longer line version IS the new version—definitely makes it click.
In Pete’s defence, I made clearer which version was which after I read his comment.
Pete, thanks for all the generous comments on Vivid of late.